Undergraduate research is the benefactor of a gift from Rochelle Campbell and Professor Sue Wessler. UCR News writes "The newly established Campbell-Wessler Endowed Undergraduate Research Award will provide $5,000 awards to undergraduate researchers affiliated with the Neil A. Campbell Science Learning Laboratory and the Dynamic Genome Program within the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences...
The University of California, Riverside Department of Botany & Plant Sciences swept multiple Graduate and Undergraduate Award categories at the most recent American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) Western Section Conference on Saturday, February 3, 2018. Pablo Martinez (Carolyn Rasmussen lab) was awarded Best Graduate Student Talk for his work using a single-molecule approach to...
Natasha V. Raikhel, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Plant Cell Biology and former director of the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology (IIGB), has been named interim editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). Established in 1914, PNAS is one of the world’s most-cited multidisciplinary scientific journals...
The Institute for Integrative Genome Biology at the University of California, Riverside awarded its inaugural Natasha V. Raikhel Award in Research Innovation and Science Leadership to Thomas Girke, Professor of Bioinformatics and Director of UCR’s High Performance Computing Center. Announced during the Center for Plant Cell Biology’s 15th Annual Symposium and Awards Ceremony on December...
The IIGB/CEPCEB geneticist has been named a foreign member of the Royal Society, whose past membership includes Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein. Inclusion in the Royal Society is based on outstanding accomplishments over the lifetime of a career in science, engineering, and technology and requires the nomination of two current fellows. Approximately 700...
UCR’s Academic Senate Award Committee awarded IIGB/CEPCEB Professor Linda Walling in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences the Distinguished Campus Service Award for Academic year 2015-2016. The award committee noted that Linda Walling served on several Academic Senate committees, most notably the Committee on Academic Personnel (CAP) as a member (2012-13), Vice Chair (2013-14)...
Julia Bailey-Serres, an IIGB professor of genetics and director of the Center for Plant Cell Biology (CEPCEB), has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for her excellence in original scientific research. Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United...
IIGB distinguished professor of plant cell and molecular biology, Xuemei Chen, will give the 64th annual Faculty Research Lecture June 3 from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Genomics Auditorium, Room 1102A.The lecture, “Small RNAs – Small but Powerful,” is presented by the UC Riverside Academic Senate. Small RNAs were the “dark matter” in...
IIGB professor of genetics Hailing Jin was elected as a 2015 AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Fellow in recognition of her contribution to innovation, education and scientific leadership in the Section on Biological Sciences. Fellows are nominated by the steering committees in the Association’s 24 sections, comprised of three Fellows who are...
A team of researchers led by an IIGB associate professor of plant pathology Wenbo Ma has been awarded a $4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in an attempt to save the United States citrus industry from a disease that has already devastated the industry worldwide. Huanglongbing (HLB), also known as citrus greening...
After a 30+ year career in plant cell biology and to celebrate Natasha Raikhel’s extensive contribution to the scientific community during the past three decades, IIGB and the Botany & Plant Sciences department hosted a one-day Retirement Symposium in her honor on March 21, 2016 in the Genomics Auditorium. The day included talks from several...
Susan R. Wessler, an IIGB/CEPCEB distinguished professor of genetics, has been named the Neil A. and Rochelle A. Campbell Presidential Chair for Innovation in Science Education in the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences (CNAS). Wessler, a passionate advocate for spreading the excitement of doing genomics research to undergraduate students, is the first scholar named...
Jessica Toth, a graduate student in IIGB/CEPCEB Associate Professor Sean Cutler’s lab, was one of 11 UCR graduate students and 2000 national awardees among 16,500 applicants who received a three-year NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. The GRFP provides three years of financial support within a five-year fellowship period ($34,000 annual stipend and $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to...
Susan R. Wessler, an IIGB/CEPCEB/CDVR distinguished professor of genetics has teamed up with John Matsui at UC Berkeley, Joel Rothman at UC Santa Barbara and Paul Koch at UC Santa Cruz to develop an interconnected “Faculty Learning Community” to allow faculty at four campuses to share proven, successful methods that improve undergraduate biology instruction. Titled...
IIGB scientists led by associate professor Sean Cutler have successfully engineered drought-threatened crops to respond to an agrochemical as if it were abscisic acid (ABA), a stress hormone that inhibits plant growth and reduces water consumption to assist survival during droughts. The researchers worked with Arabidopsis, a model plant used widely in plant biology labs...
Hailing Jin, an IIGB professor of plant pathology and microbiology, and colleagues report in a paper published in Nature Communications that the structure of small RNA (an essential nucleic acid for all known forms of life and made from DNA) plays an important role in small RNA sorting. Without this sorting, RNA gene silencing, caused...
Susan R. Wessler, an IIGB distinguished professor of genetics and a world-renowned expert in transposable elements, has been awarded the McClintock Prize for Plant Genetics and Genome Studies for her exceptional contributions to and leadership in the study of plant transposable elements for the last three decades. Given in recognition of career scientific accomplishments, the...
IIGB researchers have now revealed a new molecular mechanism for resistance and susceptibility to a common fungus that causes wilt in susceptible tomato plants. Study results appeared Oct. 16, 2014 in PLOS Pathogens. Katherine Borkovich, an IIGB professor of plant pathology and the chair of the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, and colleagues started...
The Fall 2014 HHMI Bulletin profiles IIGB/CEPCEB researcher Xuemei Chen and her seminal work on noncoding RNAs and stem cells. Dr. Chen has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute-Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation investigator since 2012. To read about her work studying how MicroRNAs are made, their role, how they do their work and how...
IIGB associate professor Jason Stajich is the principal investigator of a four-year project involving 11 collaborating institutions that have been funded a total of $2.5 million by the National Science Foundation. The project focuses on studying zygomycetes – ancient lineages of fungi that include plant symbionts, animal and human pathogens and decomposers of a wide...
